Thursday, September 25, 2008

Update 3 - FIA meet 2008

We brought the motor to a repair shop in Salt Lake City at 7:00 am Wednesday morning. Fortunately Salt lake city is also the home to the worlds largest mine, and lots of electric motors are involved in the mining industry. We located a shop that is well versed in motor repair, and had them do some more diagnostics.

It only took them about 2 minutes to determine that the motor had a problem inside, and they would have to open it up.

Once the motor was opened, it was clear we had some short circuits between the rotor and the stator of the motor. This was surprising to us, as the motor had no signs of this fault in any of the August runs.

The motor shop normally operates 9am - 5pm, and we asked what it would take to get the motor back to us by Thursday night. They said they would have to order a lot more copper coil wire, and work around the clock, but it was possible to do in time.

We gave them the go-ahead to start the repair. The winding process it self only takes a trained technician about 4 hours, but there are many other time consuming heat and chemical processes involved in breaking down the old insulation, and installing the new insulation.

We are expecting to get our motor back late tonight or early Friday morning. In the mean-time we have been load-bank testing the fuel cells, and checking all other vehicle systems to be sure the car is ready to go in every-other aspect. Also today we will do a complete rehearsal of the 1-hour pit stop turn-around.

We are hoping to get performance similar to speed-week in August, and will go for as many runs on Friday as they will allow us.

The good news is many of the cars are still struggling with problems, and there will be other teams who want to race on Friday also. We are hoping for a full day of running. Friday will likely be a busy day, so for more up-to-the-minute updates you can check www.landracing.com.

1 comment:

Chuck
said...

Hi guys -- I'm a staff writer at Wired.com, and I'm definitely interested in hearing how the attempt plays out. Drop me a line at chuck_squatriglia@wired.com to let me know when and how I can get ahold of you...

Buckeye Bullet

The student run team is based out of the Center for Automotive Research at The Ohio State University. Currently the team is in the process of designing a brand new land speed vehicle. This new vehicle branded the Buckeye Bullet 3 is anticipated to be significantly faster than previous cars. In the summer of 2010, the team built a battery powered land speed streamliner (BB2.5), that broke the previous world record held by the Buckeye Bullet 1. Each of the vehicles are run on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.